DONOVAN/OSS SYMPOSIUM ADDRESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88G01116R000500550010-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 11, 2011
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: September 16, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

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ATTACHED: PLEASE IKY IVUI iu
REMOVE FROM DOCUMENTS THANKS...
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DATE
TRANSMITTAL SLIP
16 Sept 86
TO:
Executive Registry
ROOM NO.
BUILDING
HQS
REMARKS:
T
FROM:
DCI History,,Staff
ROOM NO.
BUILDING
316
Ames
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16 September 1986
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
FROM: J. Kenneth McDonald
Chief, History Staff
SUBJECT: Donovan/OSS Symposium Address
1. I'll attach my draft concluding sections for your Donovan/OSS
Symposium keynote address this Friday, 19 September. I think I've covered
the topics we agreed on last Friday. The section titles are from the
proposed outline I sent along with the first installment.
2. I've made a few revisions and corrections on the draft opening
section that I gave you Friday, and the revised edition is also attached.
This represents part one, "Introduction," on my outline.
3. If I can be of help in editing the middle section I trust you'll
let me know.
STAT
J. Kenneth McDonald
Attachments
Distribution:-
Orig - Addressee w/att
>- Executive Registry w/o att
1 - HS Chrono w/o att
1 - Subject File (Correspondence, DCI) w/o att
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21 -
T
STA
ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET
SUBJECT hn, ~,I --- ----
Donovan/OSS Symposium Address
FROM J. Kenneth McDonald EXTENSION NO
Chief, History Staff DATE
316 Ames Bldg. 12 September 1986
TO: (Officer designation, room number, and
building)
DATE
OFFICER'S
COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom
RECEIVED
FORWARDED
INI AL
to whom. Draw a line across column after each comment.)
Director of
Central Intelligence
2.
7.
10.
12.
13.
14.
15.
FORM 610 us EDITI PREOVNSIOUS
1.79 E
EXEC
REG
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12 September 1986
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
FROM: J. Kenneth McDonald
Chief, History Staff
SUBJECT: Donovan/OSS Symposium Address
1. I'll attach a draft opening section for your keynote address to the
Donovan/OSS Symposium next Friday, 19 September. I've tried to put the
information about the released OSS records in the context of the symposium's
objectives.
2. I'll also attach an outline of my own conception of the speech,
which I hope is not too far afield from what you have in mind. In any
event, it shows my idea of how the attached draft section and the material
I'm preparing on the legacy of OSS to CIA might fit into your address.
3. I'll complete the section of the OSS legacy this weekend, and have
it for you Monday. I would be glad to work on any other section of the
address where I might be useful.
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12 September 1986
Keynote Address to Donovan/OSS Symposium
Friday, 19 September 1086
It is a great pleasure to be here this morning, to help launch this
symposium on General William Donovan and the Office of Strategic Services
that he created. It promises to be an extraordinary two days of reunion,
discussion and learning. It was a wonderful inspiration on Max Corvo's part
to organize this occasion. We all owe Max and his distinguished symposium
committee enthusiastic thanks for their success in making this meeting a
reality. It is an unprecedented opportunity for all of us who served in OSS
to survey and assess both what has been been done and what needs to be done
to establish a faithful historical record of the World War II
accomplishments of OSS and General Donovan.
In fact, our theme can be stated as the wish to promote a more accurate
record and a fuller understanding of the role and achievments of OSS in
World War II. In thinking about this symposium I decided that one good way
to organize our recollections and judgments on OSS is to look at three
aspects of its history. These can be stated in three questions.
First, how and why OSS was created?
Second, what did OSS contribute to the U.S. victory in World War II?
Third, what is the legacy of OSS to CIA?
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Before I give some partial and personal answers to these very large and
important questions, however, I want first to say something about how I
think we should go about our work, and then something about where we should
look for information. That is, I want to say something about the methods
and sources that this historical effort demands.
Since this is both a reunion and an historical symposium, it won't
always be easy to distinguish between the two. We all have a rich fund of
war stories to tell, and if we are willing to listen to some in return we
may get a chance to tell them. In this, of course, I'm grateful for the
chance to speak to you all at the outset for the better part of an hour
without (I hope) interruption. But while we will reminisce as old comrades,
we are at the same time undertaking a serious search for a more accurate
record of the work of General Donovan and OSS. We have to be patient with
each other, and recognize that both here and in the historical work already
done on OSS there is a wide range of opinion and interpretation. There is
an enormous amount of research yet to be done on the history of OSS, and as
I'll explain in a moment, the most important sources for that history are
only now becoming available. We should therefore recognize that we are
going to disagree among ourselves, and even after two days' lively debate
these proceedings will not produce final answers to the questions of how OSS
came to be created, what it did in the war, and how its experience has
influenced the development of American intelligence since then.
As veterans of a great intelligence organization we all recognize that
our first priority must be to collect the facts. In this first symposium
one of the most useful things we can do is to identify the main gaps in our
knowledge of OSS. Only when we identify the work needed for a more accurate
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historical record of OSS can we hope for a fuller understanding of its role
and achievments in World War II.
Having talked about our methods, I would also like to say something
about the sources that we need to build an accurate historical record of
OSS. First, we have the recollections of those who worked for General
Donovan in his great organization. I think that we all, as Veterans of the
OSS, have a duty to record recollections of our service. I have been doing
some writing about OSS, and I urge all of you to gather your thoughts and to
put an account of your OSS service on paper or on tape. The facilities for
tape recording that have been arranged at this symposium offer you an
opportunity to begin this effort. Recording your own experience will be
your own personal contribution to forming a more accurate historical record
of OSS.
We do not have to rely only on our recollections, however. OSS was an
extraordinarily well-documented organization. There are a lot of private
papers around, and in the past year the U.S. Army's Military History
Institute at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has opened up the papers of General
Donovan himself to researchers. While this valuable collection includes
some microfilm of the wartime Director's office files, the papers naturally
mainly focus on General Donovan and not on OSS. The truth is that
comprehensive and thoroughly documented studies of the history of OSS can't
be done without substantial research in its official wartime records. Until
recently, however, most of these records were still classified, and
researchers had no access to them except through the Freedom of Information
Act. I'm glad to be able to report, however, that these records--around
4000 cubic feet of them--have nearly all now been declassified, transferred
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to the National Archives and Records Administration, and opened to the
public for research.
Let me explain how the OSS records--which we here helped create in World
War II--made their way to the National Archives. When President Truman
dissolved OSS at the end of September 1945, X-2, counterintelligence, and
SI, Secret Intelligence, went to the War Department, where they formed the
Army's Strategic Services Unit, SSU. At the same time, Dr. William Langer's
Research and Analysis Branch went to the Department of State, which then
transferred R&A's wartime files to the National Archives in 1946. In 1972,
at the National Archives' request, CIA organized a team OSS veterans who
reviewed and declassified these OSS R&A Branch records. By 1978, the
National Archives had opened over 900 cubic feet--that is, about 23 million
pages--of declassified R&A files for research.
Although the R&A records are a major resource, their information on OSS
operations is sketchy and incidental. For lack of better sources some
authors have attempted to use them for operational or general OSS history,
but they are not really very helpful for those purposes. Comprehensive
studies of OSS really only become possible with the opening of the much
larger collection of OSS operational records, which went to the War
Department when SSU joined the Army in 1945. CIG, the Central Intelligence
Group, which was formed in January 1946, absorbed SSU--and the OSS
records--later that year, and in September 1947 CIG was transformed into the
Central Intelligence Agency. Having traveled in two years from OSS to SSU
to CIG to CIA, the OSS operational records then remained in CIA's custody,
classified and closed to the public, for over 35 years. In early 1979,
however, after a National Archives appraisal, CIA formed another team of
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retired officers, again mostly OSS veterans, who spent four years reviewing
these records. Although they were able to declassify over 94% of these
files, problems in deciding on access rules delayed the records' transfer to
the National Archives. In 1983 I asked CIA's Chief Historian to see what
could be done to release this collection. After careful negotiations, CIA's
first increment of OSS operational records was opened to researchers at the
National Archives in June 1984. I'm glad to report that this transfer is
nearing completion, and that over 2200 cubic feet of records--which would be
a stack of archives boxes over a half a mile high--have already been
transferred. The addition of the operational OSS records to the R&A files
already open at the National Archives forms a massive collection, which will
eventually make over more than 100 million pages of OSS records available
for historical research.
To give you an idea of what's in these OSS operational records, the
first batch that the National Archives opened to the public in 1984 included
war diaries and the history of OSS in London; reports of Special Forces
(including the Jedburgh Teams) infiltrated behind enemy lines; intelligence
reports from OSS stations in Rome, Caserta, Stockholm, Singapore and Burma;
Secret Intelligence operations files; the Operation Group command file; and
General Donovan's own records from the Office of the Director. Some of you
may have seen articles that such papers as the Detroit News, Washington
Times, and Christian Science Monitor ran when these OSS records were first
opened to the public in 1984. The Washington Post printed several of the
more than 60 Saul Steinberg propaganda cartoons found in the records of
Morale Operations, and also reported that MO had apparently violated
copyright laws in translating popular American songs into German so that
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Marlene Dietrich could sing them on clandestine OSS broadcasts to Hitler's
Germany. The Christian Science Monitor did a piece on John E. Taylor, the
archivist who presides over all these OSS records at the National Archives.
John Taylor, I should note, knows more about these records than anyone else
anywhere. He gladly shares this knowledge, to help researchers find what
they are looking for in this vast collection. I owe him thanks for his help
over the years, and I suspect that every other researcher in OSS records is
similarly indebted to him.
Since virtually all of the official OSS records are now or soon will be
available to researchers, we can expect a growing number of serious and
scholarly historical books and articles to be based upon them. The OSS
records are, in fact, among the most heavily used collections at the
National Archives. All of this is to say that the history of OSS, now that
the original official records are available, has become a major growth
industry in the historical profession.
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10 September 1986
Keynote Address to OSS/Donovan Symposium
Friday, 19 September 1986
Proposed Outline
1.
Introduction
A.
Thanks and tribute to organizers
B.
Symposium theme and objective
1.
An accurate historical record
2.
A serious assessment of OSS
C.
Outline of remarks
1.
Donovan and OSS origins & formation
2.
OSS contribution to war effort
3.
OSS legacy to CIA
D.
Survey of sources available for history of OSS
1. Personal recollections and papers
2. Official records now available
2. General Donovan & Formation of OSS
A. Background: Donovan's career before COI
B. Origins & formation of COI, 1940-41
C. Formation of OSS, 1942: Mission and Organization
1. Relationship to other US intelligence organizations
2. JCS jurisdiction
3. British influence
3. OSS Contribution to War Effort
A. Opportunities & constraints
1. British role: Model, Training and Cooperation
2. No cryptological role (MAGIC & ULTRA)
3. Deployment abroad (British areas: Europe & SE Asia)
No Pacific role (Nimitz & MacArthur)
4. JCS scepticism of OSS role in total war
B. Survey of theaters & components
1. Headquarters & R&A
2. Southeast Asia & China
3. North Africa & Europe
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4.
OSS Legacy to CIA
A.
End of OSS in 1945
1. Donovan's postwar planning 1944-45
2. Disposition of R&A, X-2 and SI
3. Formation of CIG 1946
B.
Formation of CIA 1947
C.
OSS contributions to CIA
1. Model: 4 years of central intelligence
2. Organization: CA, espionage & estimates in one organization
3. Personnel: training ground
4. Tradition & esprit
5. Conclusion
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